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San
Francisco worker helps Sherpa rise above disability to Everest Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
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Tom McMillan shows few signs of being addicted to danger.
The mild-mannered computer whiz lives with his wife in a San Rafael suburb and commutes by ferryboat to an office on the San Francisco waterfront. He talks about his passion for rock climbing with an air of humility. After scaling the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest this spring, McMillan had hoped to enjoy a panoramic view of the Himalayas, with their vast river valleys and towering peaks. Instead, his five-member Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition team stood above a dense layer of rain clouds. No matter. Posing for photographs beside McMillan at dawn on May 16 was his mountaineering friend Nawang Sherpa, who had just become the first person to climb the world's highest peak with a prosthetic leg. "We took some risks," McMillan said in an interview. "Nawang made a great achievement. No one with a disability as severe as his has ever done anything like this. For five years we had tried to help Nawang get to Everest." McMillan, 48, is a software developer for AMB Property Corp. of San Francisco, a real estate investment trust. He lives in Lucas Valley with his wife, Linda, who is a rock climber, business consultant and conservationist. "I pretty much spend all my free time climbing," McMillan said. "For me, it's been a lifelong obsession." McMillan grew up in Charlotte, N.C., and began rock climbing as a teenager. At 16, he visited Yosemite National Park and climbed the west face of Leaning Tower, which took 2 1/2 days. "That was the first big climb I made and it scared the crap out of me," he said. "It was audacious." A year later, he scaled the North American wall of Yosemite's El Capitan -- the first of his many ascents of El Capitan, including its most difficult routes, Reticent and Tempest. In 1981, he climbed Mount Edith Cavell in the Canadian Rockies. He studied chemical engineering at the University of Utah, then worked in Arizona before moving to the Bay Area in 1986 to take a job with SRI International. He lived in Menlo Park, met Linda at Yosemite, and they began climbing together. They were married in the Yosemite chapel three years later. McMillan was an early investor in San Francisco's Mission Cliffs Climbing and Fitness Club, where he perfected his climbing technique in the mid-1990s. He has climbed twice in the Peruvian Andes and seven times in the Swiss Alps. In 1991, he scaled the Central Pillar of Freney on Mount Blanc in France. On the Cassin Ridge of Alaska's Denali (Mount McKinley) in 1992, he climbed past the grisly sight of an Italian climber whose corpse was left dangling by a rope after a sudden storm hit. In 1998, his attempt to climb Annapurna -- also in Nepal -- was aborted because of avalanches and heavy snowstorms. Last year, McMillan ascended the 7,536-meter Mustagh Ata in western China -- which he considered a test for his ability to withstand high altitude. The catalyst for the Everest expedition occurred over lunch in spring 2003 when Hamid Moghadam, AMB Property's chairman and chief executive officer, asked McMillan whether he dreamed of climbing the world's tallest peak. McMillan replied that he never considered it because of the expense. Moghadam offered $25,000 of his own money for his employee to lead an expedition. McMillan decided it was a perfect opportunity to help Nawang Sherpa, who lost his left leg when his motorcycle collided with a bus in 2000 in Kathmandu. The Everest expedition's budget of $60,000 included airplane tickets, permits from Nepal's government, Sherpa guides, food and supplies. McMillan raised the additional $35,000 from private and corporate sources. Several of AMB Property's top execs and other employees made contributions. Early backers also included Jim Wickwire, one of the first Americans to climb K2 in Pakistan, the world's second-highest peak. Tom Halvorson, of Duluth, Minn., provided the new prosthetic device for Nawang Sherpa's left leg, and the nonprofit High Exposure Foundation paid for his treatment. Walter Racette of UC San Francisco's Department of Orthopedic Surgery had provided Sherpa with his first prosthetic leg after his motorcycle accident. McMillan endured months of heavy-duty training -- hitting the gym up to three times a day for weightlifting and aerobic workouts, methodically tracking his pulse rate. He climbed at the Class 5 Climbing-Health Club in San Rafael. He took 15-mile runs and mountain-biking expeditions through the Marin hills. He skied at Lake Tahoe to train his body to adjust to higher elevations. Some mountaineers view Everest with disdain because its climbers rely on fixed ropes, supplemental oxygen and Sherpas, an ethnic group of strong, genial mountaineers. But the ascent takes days of rugged climbing. More than 1,300 people are believed to have made it to the summit, and nearly 200 have died in the attempt since Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand first scaled Everest in 1953 with a Sherpa named Tenzing Norgay. Five-day weather forecasts and accumulated knowledge of the mountain's weather patterns have significantly raised the odds of survival. In April, McMillan and Nawang Sherpa trekked to the Everest base camp. "The Khumbu region of Everest was particularly spectacular," McMillan said. "The peaks are so steep and magnificent." The two spent several days acclimating themselves to the high altitudes, climbing between the mountain's base camp and upper camps when the snow and wind permitted. The altitude gave McMillan severe headaches. "I'm fortunate because I've got a God-given ability to acclimatize," McMillan said. "It really boils down to genetics." At Everest's higher altitudes, there is not enough oxygen to sustain the body's metabolic processes and to turn food into energy. McMillan brought along beef jerky and energy bars. The two climbers rested for four days in a village at 12,000 feet, which improved their strength. Then, they waited at base camp with other climbers from around the world for a lull in the weather. They knew that storms and hurricane-strength winds arise in the afternoon, and that avalanches, exhaustion, dehydration, frostbite and pneumonia had forced legions of others off the mountain. They recalled the 1996 disaster -- depicted by the bestseller "Into Thin Air" -- when eight climbers died after getting lost in a storm. McMillan and Nawang Sherpa were assisted by three Sherpas, who acted as guides and high-altitude porters who carried the expedition's tents, sleeping bags, food and supplemental oxygen tanks for the higher altitudes. One of them, Nima Gombu Sherpa, had climbed Everest 10 times. "Some people treat the sherpas with disrespect. I wanted everyone to be part of the team, not just be the sahib," McMillan said. "I don't think the Sherpas get enough credit. They do most all of the work. Without them, I most certainly would not have made it." Before his climb, McMillan was offered puja prayer beads and lotus petals. He asked for the blessing of Chomolungma -- "Goddess Mother of the Earth." On May 15, the wind faded. McMillan's down suit and climbing boots performed well, but his eyeglasses often froze. In this spring's climbing season, 168 people successfully climbed Everest from Nepal. Retired physician Nils Antezana, 69, of Washington, died after apparently losing his way due to snow blindness on the South Col route that McMillan took. After reaching the summit, McMillan posed with several flags, including one from AMB Property. He shot videos of his team and the stark landscape, with its gray rock, glacier-blue ice and sky. He called his wife and his boss in California via a satellite phone.
E-mail Jim Doyle at jdoyle@sfchronicle.com Page F - 7
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